


Making Hay

by Werelibrarian



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 14:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9238031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werelibrarian/pseuds/Werelibrarian
Summary: Matt hefts his cane in both hands and pokes Foggy “let’s go out drinking even though we have two hundred pages to read for Monday” Nelson in the middle of his fleshy back.Foggy snorts awake. “Wha? Matt? Are you ok? What’s wrong?”“You,” Matt says icily, “are snoring.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr, bravinto suggested: "in college Matt spoons Foggy all the time to train him to sleep on his side and STOP FUCKING SNORiNG but all he manages is to train himself cuddle with Foggy instead"
> 
> I wrote it.

September

Matt hefts his cane in both hands and pokes Foggy "let's go out drinking even though we have two hundred pages to read for Monday" Nelson in the middle of his fleshy back.

Foggy snorts awake. "Wha? Matt? Are you ok? What's wrong?"

"You," Matt says icily, "are snoring."

Now, Matt can put up with a lot. He's shared a room with five other boys since he was eleven, and none of them slept dainty. But the ragged, resonating, szzzzk-zzk-(breath)-hhhhzjkKKKKK emitting from the sinuses of his newest roommate is truly something to behold.

"Oh, hell, I'm so sorry, dude." Foggy says, rubbing his eyes, and Matt loosens his grip on the cane. He sounds dismayed--more than Matt thought he'd be. "You did the right thing. Just kick me if it happens again. This is your room and you have every right to quiet." He gets out of the bed and starts bundling up his bedding.

Matt takes a breath, feeling like the fight he was preparing for was suddenly pulled out from under him. "Are--are you sick?"

Foggy chuckles, sleepily. "Naw, man. When I'm stressed or if I've been drinking I toss and turn, and if I end up on my front, horrible things happen. I'll go sleep in the common room tonight."

Matt's never had a room to himself before. He's not sure he knows how to sleep in one.

"No, it's fine," Matt says. Foggy's halfway to the door with the corner of his pillow in his teeth and his blanket trailing behind him. "Just, try and stay on your side, ok?"

October 

Part way through October, Foggy starts spending all his time on the phone with his parents, homesick.

"No, I'm fine, Ma. I just miss you and Dad, is all." Across the room, Matt keeps his head down. Foggy's mother says he can come home every weekend if he wants. "I can't, Ma. I don't do any work when I'm at home. I just hang out on the couch and carry Bess's shopping for her." Foggy's mother pauses, whispers, "are you having your little problem again?"

Foggy sighs. "Yeah, but everyone's being really nice about it."

Matt puts his head down even lower.

That night, Matt leans over Foggy's bed and shakes him awake gently. It's been happening more and more since Foggy's started to miss home. He's even bought extra pillows to keep him from going face down, but Matt can still hear him churning around under the blankets, making sad little lost-dog noises. He settles down when he gets on his stomach, but then the awful snoring starts.

"Hey, Foggy," Matt says. Through his thin t-shirt, Foggy's skin is hot. "Wake up, you're snoring."

"S'ry, Ma," Foggy mumbles. His heart rate never really makes it to awake, so he probably doesn't know what he's saying, but Matt blushes anyway. Foggy's got one arm slung over his side-sleeping pillow, but he's more on his front than on his side.

Sighing, Matt pulls the pillow out of his arms and pushes at Foggy's shoulder until he's more or less face up, and because no one's looking, Matt pushes the hair out of Foggy's face.

Foggy goes floppy and settles more comfortably onto his back. Matt's stupid face gets even hotter. He rearranges Foggy's hair--he'll start tossing if he lies on it and pulls it in his sleep--and gulps when every touch elicits a happy sigh.

November 

"To acing midterms!" Foggy slams his plastic cup against Matt, and beer sloshes all the way to his elbow.

"To acing midterms!" Matt crows back, stunned and happy. He'd hated the people he went to undergrad with, and when Matt had first met Foggy, he expected more of the same--someone initially dumbfounded that a blind person could do well in school, then a slow morph from a friend-and-roommate scenario to tutor-student, until classes were over and Matt never saw him again.

So Matt is never going to tell anyone exactly how surprised he was to hear that Foggy's marks were only one point below Matt's own. He knows Foggy talks a good game, coming up with something decent whenever the profs put him on the spot, but Foggy is actually, demonstrably smart, and Matt's friend, and they have beer, and everything's _wonderful_.

"Hang on hang on hang on," Foggy says, drunkenly pulling on Matt's arm as they weave their way from the bar to the dorm.

"What?"

"There's a store. Gonna buy you some earplugs, buddy. It's going to be a noisy night," Foggy says.

"Nooo, let's go home, I'm cold!" Matt pulls Foggy back, "besides, complete silence scares me."

Matt blinks. Where the hell had that come from? It was true, but he hadn't meant to say it.

"Huh? Oh, because--Oh. Oh dude." Suddenly Foggy's arms are around him. "Sorry, Matt."

"Um, thanks."

Back at their dorm, Foggy climbs into bed and starts spouting love poetry to his many pillows. When Matt comes back from brushing his teeth, Foggy's muttering drunkenly and trying to wedge a pillow behind his back.

"What are you doing?"

"Tucking myself in so I don't roll on my stomach, and you can actually get some sleep. Help me out, would you?"

Rolling his eyes but chuckling, Matt tucks a pillow all along Foggy's back, and then into the crevice between the mattress and Foggy's belly, which is perfectly and sweetly round now that Matt's not feeling it through layers of jackets. He trails his knuckles over it as he pulls away; he'll blame it on the drunk clumsies if he has to.

"I feel mightily tucked. Thanks, man. Gimme your fist." Matt does. Foggy bumps it with his own. "Bonk. Night, buddy."

"Night, Foggy." Matt smiles all the way back to his bed.

In the middle of the night, the sound of a pillow hitting the floor wakes Matt up. Foggy's slipped out of his pillow fortification and, yes, there he goes, belly-down in the mattress and snuffling. It sounds innocent now, but just give him a few minutes.

Matt throws his blanket around his shoulders like a cape and walks over to Foggy's bed.

"Fog, you came untucked," he says, and wiggles Foggy's shoulder.

Matt shakes him again, but Foggy is capital O-U-T out. Matt levers him onto his side, but he can't keep him there and stretch to grab the pillow, so he sits down on the bed and reaches with his foot.

Immediately, Foggy curls towards Matt, who sits bolt upright, pillow forgotten.

"Foggy?"

"Mmm."

He should get up. There is no way he should be letting Foggy embarrass himself like this, snuggling another grown man and--guh--rubbing his cheek on said grown man's thigh. If Matt were a better friend, he would be getting up right. Now.

This second. Now.

Foggy plasters himself even more tightly against Matt's back with a happy sound. If Matt didn't have his blanket, he'd be feeling Foggy's knees pressed to one leg and his nose on the other, but Foggy's breath is even and, more importantly, quiet. Probably because he's rolled up like a cinnamon bun around Matt's hips.

Sighing, Matt toes the pillow towards him and pounds it into a folded shape in his lap. When he buries his face in it, it smells like Foggy.

December 

Matt wakes with his heart rate in the rafters, disoriented and startled.

"Foggy," he hisses. Where is he, his bed is empty, who took him?

"Mmm," Foggy mumbles. He's lying next to Matt, and the arm that was thrown over Matt's chest is now in his lap.

"What the hell am I doing here?" wonders Matt, the panic that made him mistake his own empty bed for Foggy's only now starting to ebb. He rubs his face and thinks back. Foggy had been snoring, and Matt had rolled him over--and kept him rolled over--like he always did. But as he sat in the hollow of Foggy's body, his head started to droop and droop until he just went "fuck it" and swung his legs up under the blanket.

In his muzzy recollection, Matt remembers Foggy sleepily reeling him in with a strong arm around his middle, soft hair tickling the back of his neck, a heartbeat thudding steadily against his spine, and falling into unconsciousness like a right hook to the face.

Next to him, Foggy's still out cold, thankfully on his side. But his ankles are tangled up with Matt's, and his arm is heavy and familiar across Matt's legs.

Slowly, so slowly, he moves Foggy's arm off, extracts one leg, then the other, from under the warm blankets. The bedsprings creak and groan as he eases his weight off the mattress and Matt freezes, hovering, like a burglar halfway out the window.

"Mmm," Foggy mumbles again. Matt blows out a breath and walks back to his bed. Foggy doesn't have to know anything about this; Matt will simply deny it if asked, and he'll just learn to put up with the noise in the future--because he's never touching Foggy's bed again. Matt pulls the blanket up to his chin. There. It's decided.

His bed is so cold.

January 

"I feel awful," Foggy says, sitting up in bed and rubbing his face. In his own bed, Matt doesn't move; his eyeballs, useless as they are, have turned completely to sand. "Did I snore?"

"No," Matt says. It's week three of pretending that Foggy doesn't snore and every part of his body has checked out from exhaustion. His entire consciousness is comprised of an empty eye-socket full of grit. Matt had a few days respite over Christmas, but since coming back to the dorm, his roommate has definitely had something on his mind. Matt doesn't sleep at night and he can't even nap during the day for fear of Foggy figuring it out.

Moving like an old man, Matt lets his feet fall to the floor.

"You look terrible," Foggy says, aghast.

"I'm fine," Matt croaks. He has to lean his ass on his desk to get into his jeans. It takes him a few tries.

"Ok, now you're really scaring me. Get back in bed, right now. No, right now, mister." Foggy points at the bed. "Don't worry about the lecture, I'm taking your voice recorder."

When Matt hesitates, Foggy strips him of his shirt and gives him a push in the small of his naked back. "If I find you awake when I get back I'm going to mess up the order of your closet," he threatens, but Matt's got warm cotton under his cheek, a warm handprint at the base of his spine, and he's halfway gone already.

A few hours later, someone's shaking his shoulder. "Hey, buddy, I'm back. I brought you some coffee."

Matt sticks his hand out of the blanket.

Foggy holds the coffee so near to Matt's fingers he can feel the heat of the cup but can't quite close his fingers around it. "Nnrg," Matt says, and slaps the bedside table.

Foggy sets the cup down with a chuckle. "Aw, look at you--whoa!"

Matt only lets go of Foggy's collar when he's sprawled full out on the bed, and turns himself over.

"Matt, what the hell?" he doesn't sound angry, or even startled. Just confused.

"Shh. Just shh."

Matt wants the quiet. The sweet, safe, good-smelling quiet. Reaching behind him, he captures Foggy's arm and pulls it around him like a seatbelt.

"There," he mumbles, "now it's perfect."

Twenty minutes later, Matt goes completely rigid.

"Wha's wrong?" Foggy asks.

"You're in my bed."

"Looks that way."

"Why?"

"I have no idea. You pulled me in and said ‘that's perfect'."

Merciful Christ. "Why did I do that?"

"Again, no idea. You were pretty bleary this morning. How do you feel?

"Fine." Foggy's arm is still around him, and his own palm has been laid sweetly over the back of Foggy's hand. "I'm going to get up now."

"Sounds good."

That night, Foggy snores, mumbles, and does barrel rolls under the blankets. "You can't put the penguin on the stand," he moans in his sleep, "I haven't read the deposition!"

"Shhh," Matt says, finding himself next to Foggy's bed with his fingers in Foggy's hair. "It's ok."

Foggy whines, pushing up into Matt's hand, and goes back to snoring.

Matt puts a little pressure on Foggy's shoulder. He turns over easily, and for the first time since Matt's known him, he stays there, on his side, instead of rolling forward again.

In, out, in, out, goes Foggy's breath.

Matt sits down on the mattress. Foggy stays on his side. Matt sits down again, harder this time. Foggy slumps forward.

"I've got you," Matt murmurs, catching Foggy and folding himself between his chest and the bed. Foggy's arm snakes around him like he was just waiting for Matt to arrive.

February 

"Ok, spit it out," Foggy says, leaning back in his desk chair around eight o'clock on a Wednesday. "You've been wearing that constipated look for days."

Matt's hands still on his textbook. "I'm fine." He hasn't retained a single word of this chapter.

"Buddy, you're fine as hell. But you've also got something you want to talk to me about, don't you?"

"....no."

"Matt, as your friend, I advise you to avoid polygraphs in the future, because, exhibit A: your face."

Matt grimaces. "Sometimes when you snore I roll you on your side." His words have the benefit of being true enough to make this conversation be over while giving nothing away. Well, nothing bad.

Foggy doesn't say anything for a long moment. "And?"

Shit. "And sometimes I sit on your bed to keep you there."

"....and?"

Matt's heart sinks. Did Foggy wake up one of those times and he didn't notice? He sticks out his chin. "And nothing."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Foggy shrugs and turns back to his reading. "Ok. Well, don't feel guilty about it. Ma used to have to do that too. Sometimes she'd fall asleep in my bed trying to keep my face out of the pillow."

"I've...come close."

"Come close to what?" Foggy asks distractedly. He's got a highlighter cap in his teeth.

"Falling asleep on your bed."

"Wouldn't bother me." Squeak squeak squeak, goes the highlighter. "There's no one else willing to spoon me these days." Matt's jaw drops. "That's a joke, Matt, I'm not saying you wanna spoon me. I said at the beginning you have my permission to do whatever it takes to shut me up. I've had roommates pour old beer on my head, so a sneaky bro-cuddle is not even in the same ballpark. Do you understand section four of this chapter?"

Matt finds the heading with his fingers. "Uh, not yet."

Foggy mutters.

"Do you want to hit the bar?" Matt asks, then blinks.

"Now?"

Well, in for a penny. "We've got two days before this reading is due, and we can talk about section four over a beer."

Foggy shuts the textbook with a bang. "You don't have to twist my arm."

Four hours late, Foggy opens the door so hard the doorknob hits the wall.

"Shhh," Matt giggles.

"Shhh," Foggy agrees and trips over a pair of shoes.

Matt laughs so hard he sits down on the floor, and Foggy butt-scoots over until his head is in Matt's lap. "Hiya."

"Hey," Matt says, and combs Foggy's hair with his fingers.

"You're super duper pretty, did you know that?"

Matt smiles. "Nope."

"Y'are. Like, just. Wow."

Matt's heart is pounding; it's weird, because that usually only happens with whiskey. "You are too."

"You have no way of knowing that."

"I could."

"Could what?" Foggy didn't drink whiskey either, and yet his heart...

"Have a way of knowing that." His thumb sweeps gently over Foggy's cheekbone.

March 

March comes in like a lion, and both of them go nearly paralytic with exam stress.

"Ok," Foggy says, standing in front of their six-person study group like a general, "we've got a month left and ten chapters to review. Here's the schedule: two people per chapter, meetings every three days. When it's your chapter, you re-teach us the content, we ask questions till you cry. T-minus one week, we start practice exams and speed tests."

Matt's back is cold with sweat.

"Ok, my emails will be waiting for you when you get home. Go us," Foggy says, and Matt can hear the wide smile.

One of the girls and two of the guys hug Foggy, nearly shaking with whatever soup of emotion they're all feeling right now. He waves them off with a joke, then hightails it to the bathroom.

"Wait!" Matt calls. He shouldn't be able to follow Foggy the way he does, but Foggy's bent over in a bathroom stall when Matt slams into the men's room, so he doesn't think it'll register.

"Oh, god," Matt clamps a hand over his nose. Should he be helping? He can't.

"I don't understand a third of what we've covered since mid-terms," Foggy almost-sobs.

Guilt engulfs Matt, and he edges forward. "That's an absolute lie," he says, groping for the flush and propping Foggy on the lid of the toilet seat. "I sit next to you in every class and it's a thirtieth, tops."

Foggy wipes his mouth and says nothing. His silence is more off-putting than the vomit.

"Ok," Foggy scrapes his hair back and blows his breath out like a mule. "I'm gonna go home, send out those schedules, and make another list of things I have to review." Matt pats his shoulder. "Ok."

That night, after Foggy's papered his side of the dorm with lists of cases, concepts, procedures, bits and pieces of the constitution, he sits down next to the bed with his head in his hands.

"This is going to be hell," he whispers. Matt sits catatonic and sweaty-palmed in his desk chair, the inside of his head similarly wallpapered.

"I'll get through this," Matt tells himself quietly, "I can do it."

"Yeah, I know _you_ can," Foggy snaps, "but the rest of us--" he breaks off with an angry sound.

Matt blinks. Tries to swim through the waves of panic up to where Foggy needs him. Foggy's scared. Foggy's upset. Matt taps over to him and sits on the floor.

"You can get through it too," he says. It sounds weak, but he means it. Foggy's soft, but he's _good_ and _smart_ and _he can do this_.

"Careful, Matt, you'll sprain something," Foggy mutters, and Matt feels a flash of anger. He's trying, doesn't that count for anything? He takes a deep breath, leans into Foggy's side.

"You _will_ get through this." That sounds better, and Foggy rests his cheek on Matt's shoulder.

"Is it time to revisit the earplugs question? This month is going to be awful and you can't pretend you're getting sleep when you're not. Again."

"I'll be fine. Maybe I can tie your ankle to the headboard."

"Man, we seriously don't know each other well enough to be considering bondage," Foggy quips, and Matt feels flooded with relief.

"Look, do I still have your permission to push you around in bed--" Foggy snorts, "I mean turn you on your side so you don't rattle the door off its hinges?" Foggy snorts again.

"Yeah."

"Then it'll be ok."

"Thanks for putting up with me," Foggy says, and Matt startles at the smallness of his voice. It's wrong, it's so wrong, and Matt has to fix it.

"Oh Foggy, don't start being stupid now," he says, squeezing him.

They get ready for bed in a silence that feels trusting and peaceful, but Matt doesn't really understand how this can be, how an absence--of noise, of talking, of laughing, of fighting--between him and Foggy can feel this okay. This good.

"Hey Matt?" Foggy says, just when Matt's about to drop off, "remember when you said you almost fell asleep trying to keep me quiet?"

Matt grunts a "yeah,"

"How close was almost?"

"99%." It's not a lie, he's only off by one percent.

"Next time, just stay. You'll lose less sleep."

"If you say so." He doesn't get to sleep for a long time. Foggy miraculously doesn't snore, and Matt's disappointed that he's disappointed.

April 

"Foggy," Matt whispers. It's ten PM the night before an eight-thirty exam. Their alarm clocks are set for four AM to get in one last review session.

"Mmm?"

"You're snoring."

"Mm. Sorry." He rolls onto his side and then pulls the blanket back. Matt feels his eyebrows go up, but Foggy's breathing has evened out again. He shouldn't. He really shouldn't, and he's about to turn away when he hears Foggy mumble, "hurry up, it's cold."

Matt lies down at the very edge of the bed, suddenly worried about taking liberties now that he knows Foggy's still a little bit awake. A pang of guilt hits him for all the times he didn't care quite so much.

"Not gonna bite," Foggy slurs, so Matt shuffles back a third of an inch and waits for Foggy's heartbeat to drop into full sleep before he picks up Foggy's hand and puts it on his waist.

Foggy wakes up enough to pull him close with a pleased noise.

Matt's face is glowing and so is his chest, but he can feel every one of Foggy's fingers splayed over his belly. His little finger is laid along the waistband of Matt's sweatpants, and when Matt exhales, it slips underneath.

Matt closes his eyes and sighs, and squiggles deeper into Foggy's warmth.

"Mmmm," he says, and it's perfect.

May

"There's a great party in here with lots of boys and girls--some very interested in you, I might add--and you're out on the fire escape. How did I guess?" Foggy swings his leg through the bedroom window of--whose apartment is this again?--and sits down on the grating.

Matt shrugs, but he's smiling. "You know I can't resist a view."

"Seriously, you could have your pick of cutie-pie anaesthesiologists tonight."

"Oh, well, if they're anaesthesiologists," Matt starts to get up.

"Easy there," laughs Foggy, pulling him back.

Foggy plonks a beer bottle on the fire escape, right in the space between Matt's thighs. He clinks the necks together, "here's to us, pal. Survivors of L1."

"To us," Matt grins.

"We're gonna drink all the beers--" Matt's eyebrow goes up, and Foggy makes a dismissive sound, " _all_ the beers. And then I'm going to match you with one of these knock-outs."

Matt throws his head back and laughs. "How long have you been saving that one?"

"Since we got here. Drink up." He clinks Matt again.

"You're flying out tomorrow morning. Shouldn't you be taking it easy?" Matt asks.

Three weeks ago, Foggy had turned to him and said, "hey, so." He'd been tugging at the ends of his hair, shortened in anticipation of a muggy New York summer. "Ma and Dad sprung something on me and I have to move out early. I'm going to Ohio."

"What the hell for?" Matt had burst out.

"I know, right?" Foggy had yelled back.

Now, Foggy waves his hand. "My side of the dorm is empty. Why should I spend my last night in New York making like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape?" Matt shakes his head because Foggy makes it sound like he's leaving for good instead of for five weeks, but it feels a little like he is leaving for good, especially the way that he'd emptied the dorm in bits and pieces, taking box after bag after suitcase to his parent's place.

Matt leans on him. "It's gonna be quiet without you."

"I'll bet," Foggy laughs, "well, at the rate I'm drinking, tonight is going to be a night to remember, noise-wise."

Matt bites his lip. He's talking about snoring. Matt knows he's talking about snoring. But it doesn't sound like it, and Matt has a flash--a bonfire, really--of the two of them taking advantage of their emptying dorm building to be...noisy. He gulps.

"Fog, I think we should go home," he puts his chin on Foggy's shoulder, "I don't want you to miss your flight."

Foggy turns to look at him, and their noses brush. There's a beat of stretched-out silence. "Ok, Matt."

Matt's still a little buoyant from alcohol and all warm on the inside, so at the end of the night, he pads all the way over to Foggy's side of the room and gently kisses him on the top of his head. He accidentally bumps his hand into Foggy's face and feels his smile. "I'll see you when you get back, right?" Foggy needs to be on the road before dawn and he told Matt not to wake up to see him off.

"Yeah."

"Night."

"Goodnight, Matt."

\--

Matt reaches for his alarm clock and swipes empty air. "Whafuck?" he mumbles.

"Sorry, s'mine," Foggy says, switching off the alarm on the other side of the bed without unburying his head. "Hey, you're here."

Matt rubs his face. Exams are over, he's allowed to sleep in now. Why for the love of God is he awake. "Looks like."

"It's not even light out," moans Foggy, and swings his legs over the side of the bed. "Don't get up."

"Kay," Matt says, and turns his face into Foggy's pillow. Distantly, he hears Foggy puttering around, clicking his suitcase shut, tossing his dopp kit into his carry-on.

"S'going on?" Matt mumbles, when he slithers back under the covers.

"I'm done packing," Foggy whispers back. There's something about the early morning that demands a soft voice. They did it when they had 4 AM cram sessions too. "I don't need to leave for another twenty minutes."

"You should be early."

"Just shh and let me do this." Foggy plasters himself along Matt's back and hooks his chin over Matt's shoulder.

"Your hair is tickling me," Matt says, but he buries his nose in it anyway.

"Deal with it," Foggy says, holding him close.

June 

When Matt started Columbia, he bought a prepaid cellphone. By January, he'd used only a quarter of the money. Who was there to talk to besides Foggy, who he was always with anyway?

"I'm going to have to shove you in my suitcase next time I come to Ohio," Foggy sighs, his voice tinny over the line and sounding tired. "I showed my aunts a photo of us and they've all gone slightly cross-eyed wanting to adopt you."

"Family reunion tonight, man. There were eleven baby cousins I didn't know I had," he says when Matt brings up the slur. Matt waits him out. "There was also a little bit of bourbon."

"Ok, I'm putting you down so I can brush my teeth. Just hang there," Foggy's voice recedes and Matt hears running water and clothes missing a laundry hamper. "I'm back. I'm getting into bed. Creakily. Let me tell you what happens when you make a pair of identical twins cry with mismatched cupcakes and you have to make it up to them. They take it out of you in piggyback rides."

Matt listens to stories of the Nelson clan's forced reconnections with their Midwestern roots, smiling and ignoring the ache in his chest at the distance. Foggy talks until he's yawning, and yawns until he's drowsing.

Matt gets into his own makeshift bed--a scheduling error means he's in the dorm's common room until his single is vacated--and balances the phone on his ear. If he ignores the hiss and pop of the phone line, Foggy's contented mumbling soft in his ear takes him back to that last morning before Foggy left. Back to twenty perfect minutes that Matt can curl his soul around like a flame on a cold night.

Foggy starts to snore. Matt pulls the thin blanket up to his chin and closes his eyes.

The phone makes a beep, and a mechanical voice tells him he's down to his last few cents.

July

Matt puts a single baked potato, a bunch of grapes, and post-it sized slice of cold roast beef on a paper plate and calls it dinner.

He sighs. Foggy's still in Ohio, and Matt's got a single dorm for the summer. The money he's making at his summer job at Legal Aid is going directly to Columbia's housing office--it's the only way he avoided taking out a loan to pay his housing fees up front--but it means he takes home about thirty bucks a week for food.

On the other hand, the building is quieter than Matt ever experienced during the school year, and it's not just because he doesn't have Foggy here to keep him awake.

"Hey Matt, open up!" Foggy's voice in the hallway is a surprise but so, SO welcome that Matt tips his chair getting up.

"Back up, I'm bringing in a box." Matt stands back and Foggy heaves something squarish and cardboard onto Matt's desk.

"I thought you were in Ohio for another week," Matt says, as Foggy wraps him up in a hug and kisses his hair.

"Dad got sick of lakes and Ma damn near ulcerated herself worrying about the store. Aw Matt, my sweet trusting buddy, why'd you let them give you a broom closet?"

Behind his glasses, Matt makes his eyes wide. "Really?" He makes a show of feeling the walls. "They said the bleach smell just meant it was clean."

He can hear Foggy's lips clamped between his teeth, and they both bust out laughing together.

"Ohio was nice, but man, I wish you'd come with." Matt shrugs. "Ma sent some stuff, and," Matt hears Foggy scratch the back of his head sheepishly, "to be honest, so did most of my aunts. I sort of didn't shut up about you, so here's corned beef, kielbasa, and apple butter. And Ma bought you a hot plate and a pot, some spaghetti, and about sixty bags of vacuum sealed meat sauce."

Foggy takes Matt's hand and puts it on everything he names. "This is a bag of margarine packets, for which I apologize, but we didn't know if you had a fridge," Matt doesn't--anything he buys he eats right away, "and this is rye bread from my gran. She says it's more filling than white. A box of granola bars, some beef jerky, and peanut butter."

Matt's jaw is on his chest.

Foggy moves Matt's hand one more time. "And the beer's from me."

"Foggy, I--" there's a lump in Matt's throat, "say thanks to your family for me," he croaks lamely, feeling unspeakably grateful and supremely uncomfortable.

Foggy punches his shoulder and shoves an open beer bottle into his hand.

"And for tonight, you have the distinct pleasure of eating my dad's 'what do you mean I'm not a real Ohioan anymore? Anna, hold my flower' pierogies." There's a clink of a glass lid being lifted, and the smell of hot potatoes and onions.

Matt raises his eyebrows. "That sounds like a story."

"Aspersions were cast and my dad got surprisingly competitive. Give me a plate, and I'll tell you all about it."

Two plates of pierogies and two and a half beers later, they're sacked out on the bed and starting to yawn.

"Ugh, food coma incoming," Foggy says into his palm.

"Did anyone in Ohio try to kill you for snoring?"

"Everyone. There were pitchforks and torches--it was like that scene from Beauty and the Beast. But I bet you're sleeping like a baby now that I'm gone."

"I don't know. Sometimes it's too quiet."

"Well, I've had beer, so give me a blanket and I can fix that for you."

Matt hears himself say, "ok."

"What?"

He shrugs, doubling down on his independently minded tongue. "I was on an air mattress before I got this room. You can stay the night if you want."

Foggy laughs. "You miss my snoring so much?"

Deep down inside, Matt's heart nods, but outwardly he just shrugs again.

"I'll just run down to the corner store for a toothbrush," Foggy says.

Foggy sets up the inflatable mattress in the runway between Matt's bed and his desk. Matt dangles his fist over the edge of the bed at him when he says goodnight.

"Bonk," Foggy says, "night, Matt."

"Night."

It's not an hour later when Matt dangles his hand over the edge of the bed again, this time flicking Foggy's ear.

"F'k off."

"Get up here, you're sawing logs."

"Kay." Foggy settles in, tucking his knees behind Matt's and throwing an arm over his waist, and it's like something hard and spiky inside Matt rounds out. "Missed you," he whispers, five contented minutes later.

Foggy's arm tightens. "Missed you too," he says.

That's 1000% something that Foggy shouldn't have heard, but Matt's too close to sleep to freak out.

August

"Matt, I think your pool floatie sprung a leak," Foggy wheezes. He's been trying to blow up the air mattress for about twenty minutes.

"What makes you say that?" Matt says, running his hands over the meagre possessions in his wardrobe. There's an orange crate on the floor next to him, still whiffing strongly of oranges. He's packing, getting ready to move into a double room again with Foggy, and it's the first time he's ever needed a box.

"I can see light through a seam, do you want to feel?"

He makes a face. "Well, it cost me five dollars, so I guess you get what you pay for."

Foggy sprawls out on the floor, the deflated mattress over him like a blanket. "I don't want to go home, Candace has a hundred and seventeen tenth-grade girls sleeping over. Ok, more like four. But still."

Matt nervously rubs his knuckles with the palm of the other hand. "Sleep in the bed. We've done it before."

Foggy chuckles. "What kind of a boy do you think I am, Mr. Murdock?"

Now or never, Matt thinks, but he doesn't have the courage to turn around.

"Foggy," he says to the row of empty hangers.

"Mmm?"

"Sleep in the bed." Foggy starts to say something. "With me," Matt interrupts too loudly, the words too out there, irretrievable. "Sleep in the bed with me."

The mattress-blanket crinkles when Foggy sits up. "Matt, are you saying--because it sounds like you're saying--"

Matt rubs his chin. He's not cutting the most confident figure right now, but. "Yeah. That's what I'm saying."

Foggy starts folding up the mattress and shoving it under the bed. Matt just stands there, listening to the plastic, listening to Foggy's heartbeat.

"I guess I'll just go brush my teeth," Foggy says, and leaves the room. Matt covers his face with his hands and bangs his forehead into the wardrobe door.

When Foggy gets back, Matt's waiting under the blanket in his shorts. This is a new thing, intentionally getting into the same bed from the start, and he thinks Foggy feels it too, because he's sitting on the edge of his bed, shirt off but still in his jeans, his eyes on Matt like a physical touch.

Matt lies back, swallowing hard, and Foggy's pulse quickens.

There's a pop of a jeans button and a zipper being lowered, and then Foggy's lying next to him. Matt's felt Foggy's skin before--holding onto his arm, that time he let Matt touch his face, and it was inevitable, really, once spring came along--but one or both of them always managed to be wearing a shirt when they ended up in the same bed. Now, he's bare and warm and so close Matt couldn't avoid him even if he wanted to.

He rolls onto his side. Towards Foggy.

For a long while there's just the sound of their breathing, the two of them nestled together like quotation marks. Matt knows he should say something, this was his idea after all, but Foggy rescues him--again, always--by pressing his mouth softly to Matt's.

"I used to wonder why it never got weird," Foggy says, "one of us should have freaked out about it at some point, at least."

"It's not weird," Matt says. Someday he'll tell Foggy that he did freak out, but not enough to stop.

"Two people spooning all the time but not doing anything else? That's not the normal university playbook, Matt."

"I don't care about what's normal." You're here, Matt thinks. You're here and I found you and that's _better_. "I don't want to be normal. I want to be with you."

Under Matt's fingers, Foggy's cheeks bunch up in a smile. "Good," he says, "then we're on the same page."

Something Matt didn't recognize as fear suddenly unknots in his stomach. "Good," the word whooshes out of him. "God, Foggy, that's. Good."

Foggy's palms are on Matt's sides. It makes him shiver. "Can I have another kiss?" Foggy asks.

Matt wraps his arms around Foggy's neck and pulls him on top. "You can have all of them."

\--

In the dead of night, exhausted, satisfied, his underwear dangling from a corner of the bookshelf, Matt blinks awake and finds Foggy's head pillowed on his chest. He runs his fingers over a warm, smooth brow, still a little disbelieving. A rumpled cloud of hair drapes over his knuckles as he walks his fingers over a gently sloping back.

He pokes it.

Foggy snorts. "Wha? What's wrong?" He wipes a trail of drool from his chin.

"You," Matt says affectionately, "are snoring."

"Oh, sorry."

"Get on your goddamn side, Foggy, you're making my skull vibrate."

"Cool, ok," Foggy snuffles as he rolls, "guess the honeymoon's over."

Matt shoves one arm under Foggy so he can cuddle him more effectively, hooking his chin over Foggy's shoulder and inhaling against his throat. His hands roam all over Foggy's sleepily pliant body.

"Never," he says, kissing the back of Foggy's neck and falling asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This malarky is the fault of [tumblr](http://www.werelibrarian.tumblr.com)


End file.
